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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Happy July! It's Currently linky time! Here's my addition to the popular monthly link up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade.

Listening: So yeah, I'm a WEN girl. My curly hair is soooo much better for it! It's been about 3 years and humidity doesn't wreck my hair as much anymore. I got the Winter Vanilla Mint in the gallon!

Loving: My sleep patterns get all wacky during the summer. I stay up til midnight but sleep til about 10am. Ah the single life!

Thinking: I just started planning for the coming year. With my new 4th grade social studies/science, there's a lot for me to do. Thankfully, I still have 3rd math and that I can teach easily!

Wanting: With all that planning to do I wish my room was finished. There's still a full bulletin board inside to do and more decorating out side to do!

Needing: I'm joining in some weekly blog posts about chapters from the newest Whole Brain Teaching book 122 Amazing Games! but I haven't finished this week's chapter yet. Eeeeek! Come back late Wednesday for that post - hopefully!!!

All Star: Helping others is what I picked because I love doing that online! I answer lots of WBT questions on the website forum and Facebook page. At the national conference, I walked around to help and explain things. Most summers I have my classroom and prep all done, so I offer to help my coworkers get their stuff done.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Please don't hate me....I spent about 4 hours in my classroom today trying to get things put back in order. At my school, as long as we can pretty much get into the building all summer long. I take advantage of that!

So, with that in mind, here's my Monday Made It! This time it's all things I've done in my classroom.

I've changed my class theme for the year to pirates with colors from the Dots on Turquoise borders. First up was to put some chevron border around this long dry erase board. I used poppy red and blue so far. I'll be adding a strip of green to separate my 3rd and 4th grade WBT PowerPix.

This bulletin board is in the hallway across from my classroom. I put the double border up last time I was there. Today, I added the palm tree. The title, which will go above, will probably be Ahoy Mateys! Welcome to Room 12's Pirate Cove. I've got some pieces to laminate that will be up there with my class lists for the first day.

So I needed better way to display the birthdays of my students since I'll have near 60 of them this year! Some old calendar headers, a little marvelous tape, and my storage cabinet equals a large birthday calendar! I'll have the students color a small cupcake which will go under their month. Hopefully they all fit!!!

Friday, June 26, 2015

For week 2 of the TPT Seller Challenge, we're asked to dream big! What do we want out of our TPT store?

First, I'd love to pay off the mortgage on my house. I still have another 15 years to go, but paying off that early would be nice.

A couple years ago, I took a trip to Las Vegas with a friend of mine to attend a conference (non-teaching related) together. I'd love to go back either for the TPT conference or just to go for fun!

Retirement is something I have to consider as I teach in a non-public school which means I'm not putting years into a retirement system. I have some saved, but these days it seems you can never have enough in that nest egg!

Having just returned from my 4th national WBT conference in Pineville, Louisiana, I am so ready to up into this book!

Chapters 1 and 2 are the basics of WBT which makes this book great even for those who aren't familiar with WBT is all about. Specifically, it reviews the Big Seven: Class-Yes, Mirror words, the Scoreboard, 5 Class Rules + the Diamond Rule, Teach-Okay, Switch, and Hands and Eyes. These are the first pieces to implement in the classroom at a pace comfortable for the individual teacher and his or her students.

Class-Yes is the Attention Getter. It gives a simple yet effective way to gather the focus of a group, even during activities.

Mirror words, the Engager, ensures students are actively participating in lessons because it is easy to visually see that students are focused.

The Motivator in WBT doesn't cost anything! No treasure chests, tickets, class money, or junky, cheap toys! The Scoreboard entices students to exhibit behaviors at grade levels higher than their current one with game-style levels.

The 5 Class Rules + the new Diamond Rule, the Class Unifier, covers all the behaviors you may encounter! While my school doesn't use it, I've even learned that those using PBIS can incorporate those expectations into Rule 4: Make Smart Choices!

Teach-Okay and Switch, the Activator and Involver, give students time to talk to each other about the information being taught. Worried about your chatty student taking over? Just have them Switch roles on your direction and even the shy students have a turn!

When an important topic needs introducing, you can use the Focuser, Hands and Eyes, to place extra emphasis on the attention of students!

Don't forget to visit Melissa and Heidi at their blogs as we continue our WBT book study!

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Have you been curious about Whole Brain Teaching and how to become a certified WBT educator? The journey is simple and exciting! In December 2012, after a few months of work on certification, I was the 4th person to achieve Level 5 - WBT Board Certified Instructor. If your intrigued, here are a few key things you need to know.

WBT Certification document: - If you visit the website, www.wholebrainteaching.com, there's a document titled Certification 2.1 which details the process. It explains the levels of certification and how to submit the points you've earned.

WBT Book:- Available on Amazon in hard copy or for Kindle, this is the resource you'll use to make certification posts. WBT book on Amazon

WBT book club:WBT Book Club - This site is where you're posts in response to questions about chapters in the WBT book are submitted. Responses don't have to be long, but they must be well written with few/no errors, and should also be thoughtful answers to the questions.

Facebook Connections:WBT Facebook page - Recently, Coach B has started posting certification questions on the WBT Facebook page. The first question is worth up to 20 CP, or certification points. In addition to the main Facebook page, there are pages for specific grade levels. If you're interested in one of those, just leave me a comment and I'll give you a link!

One of the best parts to the certification process (aside from it being FREE) is you can work through it on your own time table. No deadlines, no pressure! Since many teachers are on summer break or will be in the coming weeks, it's a great time to work on earning points. You can delve deeper into WBT and start planning and thinking about how it will fit into your classroom next year!

Monday, June 1, 2015

For the first time, I'm joining in the Monday Made It linky from 4th Grade Frolics!

I've been out for summer almost a whole week already! The break tends to go by so fast and I even made my first summer visit to school to start putting my room back together from the end of the cleaning. While home, I've been working on a new project.

Brag tags - For a few years now, I've purchased brag tags for my kiddos for things like birthdays, Accelerated Reader and Math achievements and even holidays. I love how cute they are, but they're a bit expensive. After discovering that teachers have started creating their own, I decided to give it a try. Here's my first couple of sets:

Both pictures have a Welcome to ___ Grade - one for 3rd and one for 4th as I will be teaching both grades next year. I added a box at the bottom for numbers which I put in the first set already. Instead of writing the names of my students on each tag, I wrote numbers since I number them. This should make it easy to tell the tags apart.

There's also a couple of birthday tags. Since we don't allow birthday celebrations at my school, I like to recognize the students with a birthday on a school day. In the past, I've had a boy and a girl tag but since I made these myself, I decided to let them choose which version they want.

I'll be cutting, laminating, and hole punching these soon. The students will be putting them on binder rings until the end of the year when I'll give them a ball chain. I found the idea on a blog through Pinterest! That should be so much easier and faster for students to place their tags on!

Do you use brag tags? What kinds do you use? I'm planning on making some for AR/AM and for some WBT things like SuperSpeed Math, Super Improvers, and maybe even special class rules tags.